September 10, 2024 • 54 mins
Steven Monacelli, a journalist in Texas focused on politics and extremism, and Dr. Michael Phillips, a historian of racism and eugenics in Texas, team up to explain the apocalyptic religious belief that shapes politics in Texas — and in turn, the nation and world.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political
extremism in Texas.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of
racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew
up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both
of us, our home state has been a matter of
both wonder and horrified fascination. In this episode of It
Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas
(00:32):
culture and politics and why the country and the world
should care. Spoiler alert, What happens in Texas doesn't stay
in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact
on national politics. The annexation of Texas in eighteen forty
five provoked the Mexican American War. From eighteen forty six
to eighteen forty eight. The United States grabbed two thirds
(00:55):
of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter
fight over the status of slavery and all that new
land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out
to be one of the major causes of the Civil War,
a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million
African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three
(01:15):
quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter
of the Populist Movement, a leftist movement largely based in
Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party
in the South. And if the Populist Party had succeeded,
everything else that happened in America in the twentieth century
(01:36):
in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Clan, etc. May
have had a very different outcome.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Slavery didn't end in Texas until June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five,
months after it had ended in the rest of the country.
It's a state that today is the second most populous
state in the nation and it's the eighth largest economy
in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over
the last sixty years hailed from the lone Star state.
(02:04):
There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not
only Medicare and Medicaid, but the nineteen sixty four Civil
Rights Act and the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act,
two issues that the right wing continue to fight against
to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the
most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to
(02:27):
johnson civil rights legislation, urban uprisings and places like the
Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led
segregationists and their children in the South, who had been
loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party.
Over the next three decades, another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush.
He aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican
(02:50):
Party and the most right wing Christians in the country,
and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course,
the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise
to pa and broadly speaking, the wealth of right wing
oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party
further and further to the right, in no small part
due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity,
(03:13):
which we'll get to later in this episode.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center in the Pentagon on September eleventh led to the
rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest
wars in American history. Both of them disastrous failures. The
combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives,
(03:38):
the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican
Party in that time period, and the sense of the
United States was a declining power unable to impose its
will on Afghanistan and Iraq opened the door of the
Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short two Texas presidents played a
major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse,
(04:01):
more urban based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican
Party more white, more right wing, more isolationists, and far
more fundamentalists and skeptical science.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years,
and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and
infamous for its wide open gun laws and several of
the worst mass shootings in American history, including at an
army base in Killeen, a Walmart and al Paso, and
an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete
(04:36):
strangers to sue women who go out of state and
their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent
women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if
they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested
for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
In the last three years in this state, a group
of teachers in the Southflex School District in the Dallas
Fort Worth area were in struct did to tell quote
both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run
a foul of the legislature's ban on critical race theory.
A beloved teacher, Nerving, was fire for displaying a rainbow
sticker in our classroom as a sign of support for
(05:14):
LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal
at Heritage High and yet another Dallas suburb, Colleville, was
forced from his job when he sent an email to
his high school community after the murder of George Floyd
that acknowledged existence of systemic racism in the United States.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So, you know, I think you could maybe pick up
on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights
like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run
a foul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the
Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books.
(05:54):
All across this nation, we've seen dust ups over books
in schools and libraries, and Texas has been one of
the main flashpoints of this fight. So the literary organization
pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation
in book bands at public schools, with more than fifteen
(06:15):
hundred books banned in the state of Texas. Most of
those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience,
and one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas
Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on
(06:36):
alleged felony charges of providing so called harmful materials to
miners simply because they allowed miners to access acclaimed books
like The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison. According to an
investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer Scott London,
was a member of the extremist Oathkeepers organization. He subpoened
(07:00):
names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material,
and he even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians
who drew his unwonted attention. The investigative report that came
out of this investigation into so called harmful materials was
eight hundred and twenty four pages long, and no charges
(07:22):
were ever filed, but nonetheless a lot of people's lives
were made difficult and a bunch of books have been
taken off the shelves.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting
edge of right wing politics in America on issues like abortion,
the treatment of trans children, and on immigration particular. Texas
has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and
(07:52):
policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Gabbott essentially tried
to establish his own independent border policy, even though the
constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas
so far has built thirty four miles of a wall
Abbot valves will eventually extend along the entirety of texas
(08:13):
twelve hundred and fifty four mile international border with Mexico.
One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would
take thirty years and cost twenty billion dollars. The state
of Texas has placed Buoy's entangled with razor wire in
the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town
(08:34):
that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence
and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest
of Latin America.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
One of Governor Abbot's border initiatives, Operation Loan Star, has
flooded the border with hundreds of law enforcement agents and
has touted thousands of arrests, but it also costs eleven
billion dollars and it's unclear what it's really done in
terms of making the state safer. Texas insists, through statements
(09:05):
from people like Greg Abbott, that immigrants are dangerous and
that they are flooding our streets with crime, never mind
the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less
likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly.
In August twenty twenty three, a buoy trapped a twenty
year old Duran and a small child, causing them both
(09:27):
to drown. The Texas border patrols El Paso sector has
become one of the deadliest areas of the border here,
with one hundred and forty nine immigrants dying over a
twelve month period between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Recently,
on a podcast, Abbot expressed regret that Texas has been
unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas
(09:48):
by crossing the Rio Grant and has complained that the
Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if
such lethal force was used.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And the only thing that we're not doing is we're
not shooting people who come across the border.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Because of course the Bid administration would charges with murder.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst
the Anglos living in the state that white people will
become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority, and this
connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of
abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether
(10:27):
or not white Texans were committing what they said in
the early twentieth century was so called Reese's suicide, a
real panic that black and brown people would eventually out
number whites and would seize political control of the state.
And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout
the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas,
(10:48):
there's been a concern that white women are having abortions,
and that really fuels some of the extremism in how
Texas has approached this issue. Twenty twenty two, this state
legislature passed the law that would allow a third party
to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion,
although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law,
(11:12):
called Senate Bill eight. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton meanwhile
has addressed another issue dealing with trans children, and again,
trans children, if they're white, would be out of the
reproductive demographic race that panics white racist in the state.
He has tried to force doctors and other states to
(11:33):
provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care
outside of Texas, and the parents are trans children in
Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case,
these extreme laws have been discussed in some cases imitated
in other red states.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So, on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants
allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated
by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick,
who has said that immigrants are trying to take over
our country without firing a shot. This is something that
(12:14):
people like the Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who has met
with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works
for one of the largest political donors in the country.
He believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On
the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues
(12:34):
in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves
as we've previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from
students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen,
as doctor Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents, and a
lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are
(12:55):
being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries,
and other settings, the idea being that, yes, they're trying
to turn your kids gay, that's what they're saying. And
so of course they're going to be extremely upset about
any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population, or a
(13:16):
growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender, and so
much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all
of this it matters in a bigger perspective, and I
think we can understand why some of this is so
prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to
(13:39):
national politics.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Texas counts for forty of two hundred and seventy votes
needed to win the electoral College. Only California has more
electoral College votes, and the Republican Party has been able
to rely on winning every single presidential election in the
state since nineteen eighty. If Texas should ever flip politically,
(14:04):
it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever
win the White House again. And it always seems like
Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Right, there's been a lot of talk for a long
time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually,
you know, the numbers are just baked in and that
Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look
at some of those numbers. So, Tejano's or people of
Latino Hispanic descent, make up more than forty percent of
(14:34):
the state's population, so they're the largest single population group.
Non Whites account for sixty percent of all Texans, and
as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats, and they
control most of the state's largest cities in terms of
political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people
of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder,
(14:56):
making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering the general feebleness
of the Democratic Party in the state. The state has
remained in control of a very conservative, very white, Republican
minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is
blue except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is
(15:18):
in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it
is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have
often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things
like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville,
as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrn County. If you've
ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town
(15:39):
in Arrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues
that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican
power in the state, which if it were to fall,
would pretend great changes not just for the politics in
the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be
really dull and talking. You used to talk about boundaries
for particular campuses, you know which students are going to
tend which class. But now, over the last few years,
very often they've been scenes of screaming, matches, threats, and
so on. Texas in many ways has become a laboratory
(16:25):
of autocracy, and again it's a model for other states
that have a right wing political leadership. For instance, the
Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes
in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected,
(16:45):
and essentially, the Republican Party called for creating a local
version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a
candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down ballot statewide
offices could win the popular vote and still lose the
election unless they carry a majority of the two hundred
(17:08):
and fifty four counties in the state, most of which
are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law,
the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state,
and as I said, other Republican states are looking at
this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that
(17:29):
would really end any pretense of democracy because most people
in Texas live in cities like the rest of the
United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip
on the state is by waging a never ending culture
war centered on matters of faith. So If you really
(17:50):
want to understand Texas, its culture and its politics, you
can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive
into one particular type of Christian Christianity we've already referred to.
This interpretation of the Bible motivates right wing voters and
the vast rural sections of the state and the outer
suburbs and the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's
(18:15):
laws and attitudes where it's African Americans, immigrants, and the
people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and
also non Christians like Jews and Muslims.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you trap the sort of issues that are being
discussed by the Republican Party of Texas and you look back,
say to the time of George H. W. Bush, and
you look to now, it will be very clear to
you that the topics have changed. The sort of things
that they talk about. It's less about low taxes, it's
less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you
(18:50):
do what you want in your personal life, and it
is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on
others through policy and the most vocal, perhaps one of
the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds. Sect
(19:11):
of Christianity that is, you know, driving this is this
group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists.
So what's a dispensationalist. It's a fancy word for someone
who believes that we are living in the end times.
The end times being this idea that at any moment
now all true Christians will be whisked up into the
(19:35):
clouds in an event called the Rapture, that an embodiment
of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world
and try to destroy Israel. And you know, all of
this is, you know, presaging the final judgment, you know,
the day when the Lord Jesus comes down and he
basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and
(19:55):
that settles it for all eternity.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics
has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are
certain World War three is going to consume the planet.
They believe there's going to be a final battle between
(20:19):
good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they
believe this, and this is significant. They believe that Jesus
Christ will come back specifically to stop World War three
for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent
the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet.
(20:41):
And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going
to die, those who survive are going to convert to Christianity,
and when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a
divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace
and harmony, called the Millennium.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and
its doom day theology, both in modern times but also historically.
One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city
of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse, and in the
late twentieth century, predicting the end of the world was
(21:21):
a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here
in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups
when it came to originating and promoting this idea of
the end times. And it also has to do with
one gentleman named Cyrus Scofield. But before we talk about
(21:44):
Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
What happened was there's this member a convert to the
Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas. He had been a
politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he
was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was
struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield,
(22:22):
and he converts to Christianity and he's invited to head
this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas.
And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's
learned from other evangelists, and he's a modernizer. He has
(22:45):
adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually
he produces something published in nineteen oh nine called the
Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible
(23:06):
with footnotes that he and his co editors have put
together where they say, these strange verses in the Book
of Daniel and the Book of Revelation that referred to
beast with seven heads and ten horns, and you know,
these other strange creatures, and this highly symbolic language has
(23:27):
a very literal obvious meaning, and that is the return
of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how
that marks the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So the Schofield Reference Bible extremely popular when it comes out.
It was so popular it didn't save effectively the Oxford
University Press from going.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah under during the Great Depression. That was very much
a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And
Schofield was lucky in some ways that you could put
it that way, because the Reference Bible comes out in
nineteen oh nine, and four years later what was at
(24:13):
that point the most catastrophic war in human history. World
War One breaks out with a level of death and
technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens.
You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's
a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing.
(24:36):
Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communists takeover,
you might have fascist takeover. And then of course World
War Two, and then finally the thing that really makes
Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of
his Biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around
(25:00):
certain variants for centuries and centuries, but it had always
been a minority view. But what really made it seem
like Schofield was onto something was nineteen forty eight when
the State of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel,
because he had been saying this would happen, this would
(25:20):
be the sign of the end. It becomes the point
where a lot of churches ministers are measured by the
degree to which they promote Scofieldism, and Protestant churches ministers
get fired if they don't begin to talk about the
end times.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing, and you
can imagine a world maybe where the Schofield Bible didn't
take off because it hadn't come out at that time
that it did.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Now one of Schofield's acolytes separated by several decades. Scofield
had been dead for a long time. When you have
a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, name how Lindsay,
who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school.
(26:10):
Dallas Theological Seminary had actually been established in the nineteen
twenties by allies associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been
a center of the study of biblical prophecy, and basically
Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said,
basically he took his class notes and turned into a book.
(26:33):
And his real effort. He had been a leader in
the campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group
that was trying to fight the counterculture hippies, LSD and
so on, and so he had that experience and he
brought it into the writing of a best selling book
called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great
(26:55):
Planet Earth is written in the language of the time.
He tries to use hippie type of lingo in to
catch on with the youth culture, and it's his timing,
just like Schofields is great. This is a time where
there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular
(27:15):
books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis UFOs, the
phenomena supposedly a spontaneous human combustion. Did ancient aliens build
the Pyramids? And if you went to a convenience store
or a store department store, you might find racks of
(27:35):
paper books with all this hidden knowledge. And people believed
that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because
of Vietnam, and so this became a phenomenal seller. It
was the best selling quote unquote nonfiction book of the
nineteen seventies. It later got made into a pseudo documentary
that was narrated by the movie star Orson Wells.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean it was so successful that it was
like twenty eight million copies by nineteen ninety had been sold.
And if you've got Orson Well's buttery voice narrating it
as if it has some real import, certainly, many, many,
many people were exposed to the ideas of how Lindsay Man.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Is faced by unprecedented perils that threatened to send his
crashing and the extention now from how Lindsay's incredible best
selling book comes the film which explores the terrifying prophesies
of the revelations Here's Our Planet Truly and Mortal Peril
the Late Great Planet Earth, featuring Orson Wells.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
But it didn't stop there. Lindsay's book inspired some other
guys who you may have heard of, these two right
wing political activists and Christian evangelicals named Tim Lahay and
Jerry B. Jenkins, And they are the creators of the
Left Behind series. Now, if you don't know that Left
(29:00):
Behind series, you may have been living under a rock,
or maybe you weren't born yet, and that's not your fault,
but it is this publishing empire. At this point, retail
giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold eighty million copies,
warehouses full of merch sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audiobooks, calendars,
(29:21):
greeting cards, a shoot them up computer game based on
the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about
the rapture, the end times. That's what the Left Behind
series was about. And those who are left Behind are
those who were not raptured, and these films center on
the chaos that breaks out right after the rapture. Really
(29:44):
really popular stuff will play a quick clip so you
can get a sense of what that's like. He took
them to protect them, what from the darkest time in
the history of this world, persecution.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And seven years of darkness?
Speaker 2 (29:59):
He took than that. The Left Behind books, they basically
depict Jesus not as a source of love and forgiveness,
but as this source of vengeance and bloodshed. One person
who spoke to in the preparation of this episode described
him as a sort of rambo Jesus, to be compared
to mister Rogers. Jesus, you could say.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And what's particularly dangerous is sometimes believers in this interpretation
of the Bible try to make the end times happen
sooner rather than later. Yeah, I can mention two cases,
one better known than the other. You had a father's
son evangelical team called Gardner Ted Armstrong. His father was
(30:47):
named Herbert W. Armstrong, that had a radio broadcasting empire.
The problem was called the World Tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
And they had.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
College campuses in California and in Big Sandy, Texas, unaccredited college,
unaccredited college absolutely And one person who had listened to
the Armstrongs on the radio. And there's an Australian named
Michael Dennis Rohan on August twenty first, nineteen sixty nine,
(31:17):
actually travels to the Aloxa Mosque in Jerusalem because he
believes that's a key focal point of where armageddon is
going to take place, and he actually starts a fire
in that mosque, and that's a revered one of those
holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where
(31:38):
there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism. Then,
of course we have what had happened to Waco, where
you had a sect very much obsessed within Times and
with dispensationalism, led by a man named David Koresh nineteen
ninety three. He led his followers on this fifty one
(32:01):
day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal
weapons that this group, the Branch Davidians held. Eventually you
have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the
Branch Davidians, and then on April nineteenth, the Feds decide
(32:24):
to charge in and there's a fire and seventy six
people die, including twenty five children.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
In the modern day, we've got two hugely influential people
who promote End Times theology. Now, one of them is
the biggest political donor in the entire state of Texas,
more money donated than anyone else. And his name is
Tim Dunn, and we'll talk about him in a second,
(32:55):
But first I want to talk about someone who is
also pretty influential, maybe not as wealthy as Tim Dunn,
who I should mention got his money through Wale. But
this is a man named John Hagy. He is the
pastor of a twenty two thousand member church in Texas
called Cornerstone Church. And I think he has a global
(33:17):
audience as large as one hundred million people. So back
in the day, as a twenty eight year old young man,
he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an
organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist
Alabama Governor George Wallace in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, let's
(33:38):
just hear from Wallace real quick, in the.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Name of the greatest people that I've ever taught differ.
I've brought a line in the dust and passed the
garment before the seat of Turner, and I faced segregation,
now segregation, the MA and segregation.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
However, since then, in his fifty eight years as a
non denominational pastor, Hagey has proven to be as much
of a lightning rod as Wallace. When Hurricane Katrina killed
nearly fourteen hundred people in New Orleans in two thousand
and five, Hagey insisted the superstorm represented God's wrath at
(34:17):
a planned gay PRII pride. I can't even believe that
that's real. Yeah, so he really said, Oh, you celebrated
the gays, and so God killed a bunch of you
with a hurricane. He really said that He's also called
the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed
that Muslims are commanded by the Qur'an to kill Christians
(34:39):
in Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he
comes to his word choice in his rhetoric.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Hagey, for instance, believes said Jewish people are still God's
chosen and he often quotes a line from Genesis twelve three,
twelfth chapter, third verse in which God says that Abraham,
I will bless those who bless you, and curse those
who curse you, and he interprets that the mean that
(35:08):
if the United States ever fails to support the State
of Israel in any of its policies, or if it
attempts to encourage Israel to trade land for peace, to
set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation,
that that leader is violating a divine commandment to quote
(35:30):
not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences.
So I one dispensationalists pastor basically said that the United
States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel.
Hage in twenty fourteen, said that a small outbreak of
the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance
(35:53):
against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of Palestinian State.
And of course, when that is a big attitude amongst
a really significant block of voters, that makes the United
States really have problems when it tries to mediate in
that conflict.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
We'll talk a little bit more about John Hagey. Right
after this ad break, you might be asking, who cares
about this guy John hagy Like why does his interpretation
(36:33):
of the Bible matter at all? Why does what he
say have anything to do with my life? And there's
a number of reasons why it matters. So, I mean,
he could be considered the most important leader of the
Christian Zionist movement for starters. He formed an organization in
two thousand and six called Christians United for Israel, which
(36:55):
has like a reported ten million members in the United States.
Not sure how accurate or real that is, but you know,
he has donated through his organizations more than fifty eight
million dollars to right wing extremists in Israel's specifically ones
that have you know, sponsored settlers to move to the
occupied West Bank in you know, violation of international law.
(37:19):
And he's you know He's pushed Congress to take a
hard line on the Palestinian issue of Palestinian statehood. He
has the ear of elected officials in Texas, so state
level politicians like Greg Gabbett and Dan Patrick have been
seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at
campaign events. Hagey has tried to, you know, influence a
(37:39):
number of issues and has had success. He was sought
as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of
George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was
an early supporter of Donald Trump, and he influences other
major pastors as well. And so it's it's hard to
say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever you know,
(38:05):
they have been invited to speak during big events like
the March for Israel in twenty twenty three, which drew
tens of thousands of people to Washington, DC. And who
was there, John hage And here's.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
One of the paradoxes of this movement. When hage was
invited to speak at this pro Israel event after the
October seventh Hamas attacks in Neurope, Israeli Kibbutz hage was
invited and a lot of Jewish people were horrified because
(38:40):
he really does capture one the central paradoxes of dispensationalism,
and that is someone can be inflexibly pro Israel in
anti Semitic at the same time. And so John Hagey
is promoted a very old anti Semitic myth that rich
(39:02):
Jewish people control the world's finances. He talks about the
Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti Semites,
you know, the secret puppet masters of the world, you know,
who rob the typical, the average person of money to
gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually
(39:25):
described Hitler based on nothing as a half breed Jew,
and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself.
So he's Hitler was an emissary of God as a
hunter to persecute Jews in Europe in the nineteen thirties
and nineteen forties, specifically for the purpose of forcing them
(39:49):
to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And you know,
he said that this was all part of the Divine plan.
Nazism was part of the Divine plan.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, but I don't just take our word for it.
You can listen to him say something along these lines
right now.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
How did it happen because God allowed it to happen.
Why did it happen because God said, my top priority
for the Jewish people is to get them to come
back to the land of Israel. Today Israel is back
in the land, and they are at His equal thirty
seven and eight. They're physically alive, but they're not spiritually alive. Now,
how is God going to cause the Jewish people to
(40:27):
come spiritually alive and say the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, he is God.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So yeah, you know, Hagy has predicted that the Antichrist
will be a half breed gay Jew and will rule
the planet on behalf of Satan. Those are the kinds
of things that he believes and he spreads. And in
spite of statements like these, several Israeli governments have welcome
to the support of right wing and times pastors like Hay.
(40:55):
I mean, they don't have any issue with, you know,
working with someone like Haig. You know, obviously that relationship
is cynical because you know, people like Hagy are able
to help bring material resources to Israel and further solidify
the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
And there's a real interesting synthusis between the far right
in Texas and the very right wing government that rules Israel.
Now Israel depends on Texas oil. Many of the weapons
Israel is using in its warren Gonza are manufactured in Texas,
(41:37):
including in the Dallas Fort Worth area where Steve and
I are having this conversation. You have some of the
wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper conservatives, such as
the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Addison, who have
spent quite a bit of money flying Texas politicians like
(42:01):
Governor Greg Abbott, the Agricultural Commissioner, said Miller, members of
the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties
and to ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that
Texas oil flows to that state.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
In the background of all of this is the money,
the money backing these politicians, and the largest and most
powerful political donor in Texas is someone who we have
mentioned already, billionaire oil man Tim Dunn. So Tim Dunn,
who is he? What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's
(42:40):
based in Midland, which is in West Texas, and over
the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of
dollars into the campaign coffers of far right politicians and
political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one
group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a
(43:00):
self admitted Hitler fan Nick went Is. Nevertheless, Dunn is
named alongside Hagey on the annual list of Israel's Top
fifty Christian Allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation, of
which Done incidentally is the chairman of the It's like
the Christian Advisory Board. So yeah, this really really powerful
(43:27):
donor who has his thumb on the scales all across
the state. He too, is an End Times prophecy believer,
and he's not just a believer. He preaches it at
his own church in Midland where he's a pastor.
Speaker 6 (43:41):
God is a consuming fire taking vengeance on those who
do not know God and on those who do not
obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word
obey means listen to. So we're talking here about unbelievers.
These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
(44:01):
of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And you know it's completely changed the nature of the
Republican Party his influence. They were already conservative and already
religious to begin with, but the sort of wave of
politicians that have been supported by Dunn has taken that
to a new level.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
And you know, I mean it's resulted in, I think,
a real assault on free speech in the state of Texas.
We have religious groups like Christians United for Israel in
the Texas Eagle Forum lobbing the state legislature and persuading
(44:42):
politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick were sympathetic to
their agenda to pass laws that limit the way people
who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So, for instance, twenty seventeen,
Texas passed has Spilled eighty nine a law that banned
to stay from doing any business with any company or
(45:03):
individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that
many activists have participated in. And on March twenty seventh
of this year, when you began to have a wave
of protests across the nation and in Texas, and there
were major protests at the UT Austin campus at the
(45:25):
University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb
called Richardson another one at the University of North Texas
UT Arlington University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded
to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined
a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood from
(45:49):
the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free, as antisemitic,
and it required public colleges and universities to review their
free speech policies and to punish what the state regards
as anti Semitic speech by faculty and students. And it
targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity
(46:14):
Committee and Students for Justice and Palestine, to be disciplined
for violating these policies the State of Texas saying these
words are forbidden.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Indeed, and despite the fact that the University of Texas
at Austin had issued a video celebrating their so called
free speech Week, I think it was just a matter
of months before they arrested one hundred and thirty six
pro Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin.
All across the state, we've seen pro Palestinian protests or
(46:49):
what you could call anti genocide protests or calls for
divestment at these various universities, and arrests have happened at
least three different universities.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
I mentioned earlier a paradox in dispensationalism, and that is
that some of the people who have absolute devotion to
promoting the state of Israel are at the same time
anti Semitic. And another paradox is that Schofield himself, Cyrus
(47:19):
Schofield himself said that Jesus wasn't into politics. He said
that when Jesus was alive, slavery, inequality of wealth, all
of these political pressure were all at their worse, and
Jesus and his apostles didn't address any of that. They
focus on salvation. That Christianity is not about changing this world,
(47:43):
because this world is doomed and the only person who's
going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these
dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be
involved in politics that's not involved in social or form.
I want you to you know, Schofield was living at
a time of progressive movement when they were trying to
(48:05):
end child labor, trying to make workplaces safer, and so on.
Today we're dealing with issues of wealth, inequality and so on.
The dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those
problems as satanic, But nevertheless, you should be involved in
politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies,
(48:26):
if it evolves banning people from gender affirming care and
so on, but that politics is okay and so and
we see this with this activism and trying to suppress
a particular side of the Israel Palestine debate.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Right, And I think that if that strain of dispensationalism
that's Schofield represented, that sort of a political dispensationalism, if
it still exists, it is certainly no longer dominant because today,
you know, we're seeing this end times theology, this belief
in this theory around the end times. It's increasingly overlapping
(49:06):
with other sort of distinct trends in Christianity. So on
the one hand, there's things like the prosperity Gospel, which is,
you know, best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest
pastor in all of the United States, and his whole
thing is, yeah, if you know, you give, you get,
and so you give me your money, and you prove
(49:28):
that you're you know, holy person, you will be rewarded.
In turn, you will be healed, all of your things
will be solved. And then the other thing that it's
overlapping with this End Times theology belief is what you know,
we might just call the Seven Mountains dominionist trend or
dominionism broadly speaking, which you may or may not be
(49:51):
familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this
idea that Christians should be at the top of all
of the mountains of society and these are just you know,
basically stand ins for the segments of society they think
are important, so education, media, politics, what have you. This
(50:15):
is a really growing idea as a sort of meme
in right wing Christianity in these sort of non denominational churches,
which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches
I think we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
And those dominionists are the ones who are taking over
these school boards that are adopting the anti trans policies
and also banning the books.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That's right, and it is a very active form of Christianity,
very politically active, and so through people like Hagey and
you know, people like Tim Dunn. We see that embodied
in what they do, the sort of advocacy that John
Hagey takes part in. In the millions and millions of
dollars that Tim Dunn umps into the state of Texas.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
You could almost characterize the Republican Party in Texas, which
is one of the most important state wings of the
Republican Party in the United States, as a wholly owned
done subsidiary.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
He really many of the most infamous Texas politicians in
this era, such as Ken Paxton, are generously supported by Dunn.
And so I think that if we kind of wrap
this up, I think that we could say that the
disdain from activism that dispensationalists claim is a ruse that
(51:40):
activism is bad if it advances any attempt to create
equal opportunity, reduce income inequality, and dispensationalists vote and they,
you know, with Texas as one of the major bases
for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential budding block. Thirty
(52:03):
nine percent of Americans have told polsters that they believe
we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is,
if you think the world's going to end, you're not
going to invest much time in making the world better,
making it a more just place. You're not going to
try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of
(52:25):
Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that supporting Israel
is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy, and that group
constitutes a third of all adult Texans, and they want
to love Israel to death because they believe that if
they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take
(52:48):
the most aggressive standards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath
of the Antichrist, which will lead to armageddon. And they're
willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for
the Second Coming to happen down to the last Jewish person.
And this is creating instability for the world and putting
(53:10):
the United States in a very difficult place in the
world stage, and the chain of events leading to our
position currently visa the Middle East can be drawn back
to this state.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
That's right. And I think one thing that I really
want to emphasize that we haven't dived into as much
as we could have, is that this sort of belief
system tends towards dehumanization. So if you believe that your
opponents are in league with the devil, or are satanic,
(53:44):
or are doing the bidding of evil, and that you
are on the side of good unequivocally and you are
doing the Lord's work. It is easy to treat your
opponents as in human, less than human, to see them
as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
And if you're wondering if it could happen here, it
meaning fascism in many ways. It's happened in Texas already,
and we have a large population here. As they wait
for the end, they're building walls around the lives of
more than thirty million people who live in the state.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I'm Stephen Manicelli.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political
extremism in Texas.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of
racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew
up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both
of us, our home state has been a matter of
both wonder and horrified fascination. In this episode of It
Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas
(00:32):
culture and politics and why the country and the world
should care. Spoiler alert, What happens in Texas doesn't stay
in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact
on national politics. The annexation of Texas in eighteen forty
five provoked the Mexican American War. From eighteen forty six
to eighteen forty eight. The United States grabbed two thirds
(00:55):
of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter
fight over the status of slavery and all that new
land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out
to be one of the major causes of the Civil War,
a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million
African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three
(01:15):
quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter
of the Populist Movement, a leftist movement largely based in
Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party
in the South. And if the Populist Party had succeeded,
everything else that happened in America in the twentieth century
(01:36):
in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Clan, etc. May
have had a very different outcome.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Slavery didn't end in Texas until June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five,
months after it had ended in the rest of the country.
It's a state that today is the second most populous
state in the nation and it's the eighth largest economy
in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over
the last sixty years hailed from the lone Star state.
(02:04):
There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not
only Medicare and Medicaid, but the nineteen sixty four Civil
Rights Act and the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act,
two issues that the right wing continue to fight against
to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the
most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to
(02:27):
johnson civil rights legislation, urban uprisings and places like the
Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led
segregationists and their children in the South, who had been
loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party.
Over the next three decades, another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush.
He aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican
(02:50):
Party and the most right wing Christians in the country,
and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course,
the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise
to pa and broadly speaking, the wealth of right wing
oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party
further and further to the right, in no small part
due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity,
(03:13):
which we'll get to later in this episode.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center in the Pentagon on September eleventh led to the
rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest
wars in American history. Both of them disastrous failures. The
combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives,
(03:38):
the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican
Party in that time period, and the sense of the
United States was a declining power unable to impose its
will on Afghanistan and Iraq opened the door of the
Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short two Texas presidents played a
major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse,
(04:01):
more urban based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican
Party more white, more right wing, more isolationists, and far
more fundamentalists and skeptical science.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years,
and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and
infamous for its wide open gun laws and several of
the worst mass shootings in American history, including at an
army base in Killeen, a Walmart and al Paso, and
an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete
(04:36):
strangers to sue women who go out of state and
their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent
women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if
they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested
for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
In the last three years in this state, a group
of teachers in the Southflex School District in the Dallas
Fort Worth area were in struct did to tell quote
both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run
a foul of the legislature's ban on critical race theory.
A beloved teacher, Nerving, was fire for displaying a rainbow
sticker in our classroom as a sign of support for
(05:14):
LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal
at Heritage High and yet another Dallas suburb, Colleville, was
forced from his job when he sent an email to
his high school community after the murder of George Floyd
that acknowledged existence of systemic racism in the United States.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So, you know, I think you could maybe pick up
on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights
like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run
a foul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the
Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books.
(05:54):
All across this nation, we've seen dust ups over books
in schools and libraries, and Texas has been one of
the main flashpoints of this fight. So the literary organization
pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation
in book bands at public schools, with more than fifteen
(06:15):
hundred books banned in the state of Texas. Most of
those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience,
and one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas
Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on
(06:36):
alleged felony charges of providing so called harmful materials to
miners simply because they allowed miners to access acclaimed books
like The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison. According to an
investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer Scott London,
was a member of the extremist Oathkeepers organization. He subpoened
(07:00):
names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material,
and he even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians
who drew his unwonted attention. The investigative report that came
out of this investigation into so called harmful materials was
eight hundred and twenty four pages long, and no charges
(07:22):
were ever filed, but nonetheless a lot of people's lives
were made difficult and a bunch of books have been
taken off the shelves.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting
edge of right wing politics in America on issues like abortion,
the treatment of trans children, and on immigration particular. Texas
has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and
(07:52):
policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Gabbott essentially tried
to establish his own independent border policy, even though the
constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas
so far has built thirty four miles of a wall
Abbot valves will eventually extend along the entirety of texas
(08:13):
twelve hundred and fifty four mile international border with Mexico.
One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would
take thirty years and cost twenty billion dollars. The state
of Texas has placed Buoy's entangled with razor wire in
the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town
(08:34):
that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence
and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest
of Latin America.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
One of Governor Abbot's border initiatives, Operation Loan Star, has
flooded the border with hundreds of law enforcement agents and
has touted thousands of arrests, but it also costs eleven
billion dollars and it's unclear what it's really done in
terms of making the state safer. Texas insists, through statements
(09:05):
from people like Greg Abbott, that immigrants are dangerous and
that they are flooding our streets with crime, never mind
the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less
likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly.
In August twenty twenty three, a buoy trapped a twenty
year old Duran and a small child, causing them both
(09:27):
to drown. The Texas border patrols El Paso sector has
become one of the deadliest areas of the border here,
with one hundred and forty nine immigrants dying over a
twelve month period between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Recently,
on a podcast, Abbot expressed regret that Texas has been
unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas
(09:48):
by crossing the Rio Grant and has complained that the
Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if
such lethal force was used.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And the only thing that we're not doing is we're
not shooting people who come across the border.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Because of course the Bid administration would charges with murder.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst
the Anglos living in the state that white people will
become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority, and this
connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of
abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether
(10:27):
or not white Texans were committing what they said in
the early twentieth century was so called Reese's suicide, a
real panic that black and brown people would eventually out
number whites and would seize political control of the state.
And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout
the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas,
(10:48):
there's been a concern that white women are having abortions,
and that really fuels some of the extremism in how
Texas has approached this issue. Twenty twenty two, this state
legislature passed the law that would allow a third party
to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion,
although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law,
(11:12):
called Senate Bill eight. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton meanwhile
has addressed another issue dealing with trans children, and again,
trans children, if they're white, would be out of the
reproductive demographic race that panics white racist in the state.
He has tried to force doctors and other states to
(11:33):
provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care
outside of Texas, and the parents are trans children in
Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case,
these extreme laws have been discussed in some cases imitated
in other red states.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So, on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants
allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated
by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick,
who has said that immigrants are trying to take over
our country without firing a shot. This is something that
(12:14):
people like the Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who has met
with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works
for one of the largest political donors in the country.
He believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On
the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues
(12:34):
in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves
as we've previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from
students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen,
as doctor Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents, and a
lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are
(12:55):
being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries,
and other settings, the idea being that, yes, they're trying
to turn your kids gay, that's what they're saying. And
so of course they're going to be extremely upset about
any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population, or a
(13:16):
growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender, and so
much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all
of this it matters in a bigger perspective, and I
think we can understand why some of this is so
prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to
(13:39):
national politics.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Texas counts for forty of two hundred and seventy votes
needed to win the electoral College. Only California has more
electoral College votes, and the Republican Party has been able
to rely on winning every single presidential election in the
state since nineteen eighty. If Texas should ever flip politically,
(14:04):
it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever
win the White House again. And it always seems like
Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Right, there's been a lot of talk for a long
time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually,
you know, the numbers are just baked in and that
Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look
at some of those numbers. So, Tejano's or people of
Latino Hispanic descent, make up more than forty percent of
(14:34):
the state's population, so they're the largest single population group.
Non Whites account for sixty percent of all Texans, and
as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats, and they
control most of the state's largest cities in terms of
political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people
of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder,
(14:56):
making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering the general feebleness
of the Democratic Party in the state. The state has
remained in control of a very conservative, very white, Republican
minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is
blue except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is
(15:18):
in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it
is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have
often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things
like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville,
as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrn County. If you've
ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town
(15:39):
in Arrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues
that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican
power in the state, which if it were to fall,
would pretend great changes not just for the politics in
the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be
really dull and talking. You used to talk about boundaries
for particular campuses, you know which students are going to
tend which class. But now, over the last few years,
very often they've been scenes of screaming, matches, threats, and
so on. Texas in many ways has become a laboratory
(16:25):
of autocracy, and again it's a model for other states
that have a right wing political leadership. For instance, the
Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes
in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected,
(16:45):
and essentially, the Republican Party called for creating a local
version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a
candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down ballot statewide
offices could win the popular vote and still lose the
election unless they carry a majority of the two hundred
(17:08):
and fifty four counties in the state, most of which
are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law,
the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state,
and as I said, other Republican states are looking at
this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that
(17:29):
would really end any pretense of democracy because most people
in Texas live in cities like the rest of the
United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip
on the state is by waging a never ending culture
war centered on matters of faith. So If you really
(17:50):
want to understand Texas, its culture and its politics, you
can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive
into one particular type of Christian Christianity we've already referred to.
This interpretation of the Bible motivates right wing voters and
the vast rural sections of the state and the outer
suburbs and the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's
(18:15):
laws and attitudes where it's African Americans, immigrants, and the
people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and
also non Christians like Jews and Muslims.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you trap the sort of issues that are being
discussed by the Republican Party of Texas and you look back,
say to the time of George H. W. Bush, and
you look to now, it will be very clear to
you that the topics have changed. The sort of things
that they talk about. It's less about low taxes, it's
less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you
(18:50):
do what you want in your personal life, and it
is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on
others through policy and the most vocal, perhaps one of
the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds. Sect
(19:11):
of Christianity that is, you know, driving this is this
group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists.
So what's a dispensationalist. It's a fancy word for someone
who believes that we are living in the end times.
The end times being this idea that at any moment
now all true Christians will be whisked up into the
(19:35):
clouds in an event called the Rapture, that an embodiment
of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world
and try to destroy Israel. And you know, all of
this is, you know, presaging the final judgment, you know,
the day when the Lord Jesus comes down and he
basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and
(19:55):
that settles it for all eternity.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics
has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are
certain World War three is going to consume the planet.
They believe there's going to be a final battle between
(20:19):
good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they
believe this, and this is significant. They believe that Jesus
Christ will come back specifically to stop World War three
for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent
the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet.
(20:41):
And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going
to die, those who survive are going to convert to Christianity,
and when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a
divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace
and harmony, called the Millennium.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and
its doom day theology, both in modern times but also historically.
One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city
of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse, and in the
late twentieth century, predicting the end of the world was
(21:21):
a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here
in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups
when it came to originating and promoting this idea of
the end times. And it also has to do with
one gentleman named Cyrus Scofield. But before we talk about
(21:44):
Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
What happened was there's this member a convert to the
Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas. He had been a
politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he
was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was
struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield,
(22:22):
and he converts to Christianity and he's invited to head
this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas.
And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's
learned from other evangelists, and he's a modernizer. He has
(22:45):
adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually
he produces something published in nineteen oh nine called the
Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible
(23:06):
with footnotes that he and his co editors have put
together where they say, these strange verses in the Book
of Daniel and the Book of Revelation that referred to
beast with seven heads and ten horns, and you know,
these other strange creatures, and this highly symbolic language has
(23:27):
a very literal obvious meaning, and that is the return
of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how
that marks the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
So the Schofield Reference Bible extremely popular when it comes out.
It was so popular it didn't save effectively the Oxford
University Press from going.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah under during the Great Depression. That was very much
a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And
Schofield was lucky in some ways that you could put
it that way, because the Reference Bible comes out in
nineteen oh nine, and four years later what was at
(24:13):
that point the most catastrophic war in human history. World
War One breaks out with a level of death and
technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens.
You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's
a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing.
(24:36):
Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communists takeover,
you might have fascist takeover. And then of course World
War Two, and then finally the thing that really makes
Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of
his Biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around
(25:00):
certain variants for centuries and centuries, but it had always
been a minority view. But what really made it seem
like Schofield was onto something was nineteen forty eight when
the State of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel,
because he had been saying this would happen, this would
(25:20):
be the sign of the end. It becomes the point
where a lot of churches ministers are measured by the
degree to which they promote Scofieldism, and Protestant churches ministers
get fired if they don't begin to talk about the
end times.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing, and you
can imagine a world maybe where the Schofield Bible didn't
take off because it hadn't come out at that time
that it did.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Now one of Schofield's acolytes separated by several decades. Scofield
had been dead for a long time. When you have
a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, name how Lindsay,
who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school.
(26:10):
Dallas Theological Seminary had actually been established in the nineteen
twenties by allies associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been
a center of the study of biblical prophecy, and basically
Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said,
basically he took his class notes and turned into a book.
(26:33):
And his real effort. He had been a leader in
the campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group
that was trying to fight the counterculture hippies, LSD and
so on, and so he had that experience and he
brought it into the writing of a best selling book
called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great
(26:55):
Planet Earth is written in the language of the time.
He tries to use hippie type of lingo in to
catch on with the youth culture, and it's his timing,
just like Schofields is great. This is a time where
there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular
(27:15):
books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis UFOs, the
phenomena supposedly a spontaneous human combustion. Did ancient aliens build
the Pyramids? And if you went to a convenience store
or a store department store, you might find racks of
(27:35):
paper books with all this hidden knowledge. And people believed
that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because
of Vietnam, and so this became a phenomenal seller. It
was the best selling quote unquote nonfiction book of the
nineteen seventies. It later got made into a pseudo documentary
that was narrated by the movie star Orson Wells.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean it was so successful that it was
like twenty eight million copies by nineteen ninety had been sold.
And if you've got Orson Well's buttery voice narrating it
as if it has some real import, certainly, many, many,
many people were exposed to the ideas of how Lindsay Man.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Is faced by unprecedented perils that threatened to send his
crashing and the extention now from how Lindsay's incredible best
selling book comes the film which explores the terrifying prophesies
of the revelations Here's Our Planet Truly and Mortal Peril
the Late Great Planet Earth, featuring Orson Wells.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
But it didn't stop there. Lindsay's book inspired some other
guys who you may have heard of, these two right
wing political activists and Christian evangelicals named Tim Lahay and
Jerry B. Jenkins, And they are the creators of the
Left Behind series. Now, if you don't know that Left
(29:00):
Behind series, you may have been living under a rock,
or maybe you weren't born yet, and that's not your fault,
but it is this publishing empire. At this point, retail
giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold eighty million copies,
warehouses full of merch sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audiobooks, calendars,
(29:21):
greeting cards, a shoot them up computer game based on
the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about
the rapture, the end times. That's what the Left Behind
series was about. And those who are left Behind are
those who were not raptured, and these films center on
the chaos that breaks out right after the rapture. Really
(29:44):
really popular stuff will play a quick clip so you
can get a sense of what that's like. He took
them to protect them, what from the darkest time in
the history of this world, persecution.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And seven years of darkness?
Speaker 2 (29:59):
He took than that. The Left Behind books, they basically
depict Jesus not as a source of love and forgiveness,
but as this source of vengeance and bloodshed. One person
who spoke to in the preparation of this episode described
him as a sort of rambo Jesus, to be compared
to mister Rogers. Jesus, you could say.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
And what's particularly dangerous is sometimes believers in this interpretation
of the Bible try to make the end times happen
sooner rather than later. Yeah, I can mention two cases,
one better known than the other. You had a father's
son evangelical team called Gardner Ted Armstrong. His father was
(30:47):
named Herbert W. Armstrong, that had a radio broadcasting empire.
The problem was called the World Tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
And they had.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
College campuses in California and in Big Sandy, Texas, unaccredited college,
unaccredited college absolutely And one person who had listened to
the Armstrongs on the radio. And there's an Australian named
Michael Dennis Rohan on August twenty first, nineteen sixty nine,
(31:17):
actually travels to the Aloxa Mosque in Jerusalem because he
believes that's a key focal point of where armageddon is
going to take place, and he actually starts a fire
in that mosque, and that's a revered one of those
holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where
(31:38):
there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism. Then,
of course we have what had happened to Waco, where
you had a sect very much obsessed within Times and
with dispensationalism, led by a man named David Koresh nineteen
ninety three. He led his followers on this fifty one
(32:01):
day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal
weapons that this group, the Branch Davidians held. Eventually you
have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the
Branch Davidians, and then on April nineteenth, the Feds decide
(32:24):
to charge in and there's a fire and seventy six
people die, including twenty five children.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
In the modern day, we've got two hugely influential people
who promote End Times theology. Now, one of them is
the biggest political donor in the entire state of Texas,
more money donated than anyone else. And his name is
Tim Dunn, and we'll talk about him in a second,
(32:55):
But first I want to talk about someone who is
also pretty influential, maybe not as wealthy as Tim Dunn,
who I should mention got his money through Wale. But
this is a man named John Hagy. He is the
pastor of a twenty two thousand member church in Texas
called Cornerstone Church. And I think he has a global
(33:17):
audience as large as one hundred million people. So back
in the day, as a twenty eight year old young man,
he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an
organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist
Alabama Governor George Wallace in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, let's
(33:38):
just hear from Wallace real quick, in the.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Name of the greatest people that I've ever taught differ.
I've brought a line in the dust and passed the
garment before the seat of Turner, and I faced segregation,
now segregation, the MA and segregation.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
However, since then, in his fifty eight years as a
non denominational pastor, Hagey has proven to be as much
of a lightning rod as Wallace. When Hurricane Katrina killed
nearly fourteen hundred people in New Orleans in two thousand
and five, Hagey insisted the superstorm represented God's wrath at
(34:17):
a planned gay PRII pride. I can't even believe that
that's real. Yeah, so he really said, Oh, you celebrated
the gays, and so God killed a bunch of you
with a hurricane. He really said that He's also called
the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed
that Muslims are commanded by the Qur'an to kill Christians
(34:39):
in Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he
comes to his word choice in his rhetoric.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Hagey, for instance, believes said Jewish people are still God's
chosen and he often quotes a line from Genesis twelve three,
twelfth chapter, third verse in which God says that Abraham,
I will bless those who bless you, and curse those
who curse you, and he interprets that the mean that
(35:08):
if the United States ever fails to support the State
of Israel in any of its policies, or if it
attempts to encourage Israel to trade land for peace, to
set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation,
that that leader is violating a divine commandment to quote
(35:30):
not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences.
So I one dispensationalists pastor basically said that the United
States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel.
Hage in twenty fourteen, said that a small outbreak of
the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance
(35:53):
against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of Palestinian State.
And of course, when that is a big attitude amongst
a really significant block of voters, that makes the United
States really have problems when it tries to mediate in
that conflict.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
We'll talk a little bit more about John Hagey. Right
after this ad break, you might be asking, who cares
about this guy John hagy Like why does his interpretation
(36:33):
of the Bible matter at all? Why does what he
say have anything to do with my life? And there's
a number of reasons why it matters. So, I mean,
he could be considered the most important leader of the
Christian Zionist movement for starters. He formed an organization in
two thousand and six called Christians United for Israel, which
(36:55):
has like a reported ten million members in the United States.
Not sure how accurate or real that is, but you know,
he has donated through his organizations more than fifty eight
million dollars to right wing extremists in Israel's specifically ones
that have you know, sponsored settlers to move to the
occupied West Bank in you know, violation of international law.
(37:19):
And he's you know He's pushed Congress to take a
hard line on the Palestinian issue of Palestinian statehood. He
has the ear of elected officials in Texas, so state
level politicians like Greg Gabbett and Dan Patrick have been
seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at
campaign events. Hagey has tried to, you know, influence a
(37:39):
number of issues and has had success. He was sought
as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of
George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was
an early supporter of Donald Trump, and he influences other
major pastors as well. And so it's it's hard to
say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever you know,
(38:05):
they have been invited to speak during big events like
the March for Israel in twenty twenty three, which drew
tens of thousands of people to Washington, DC. And who
was there, John hage And here's.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
One of the paradoxes of this movement. When hage was
invited to speak at this pro Israel event after the
October seventh Hamas attacks in Neurope, Israeli Kibbutz hage was
invited and a lot of Jewish people were horrified because
(38:40):
he really does capture one the central paradoxes of dispensationalism,
and that is someone can be inflexibly pro Israel in
anti Semitic at the same time. And so John Hagey
is promoted a very old anti Semitic myth that rich
(39:02):
Jewish people control the world's finances. He talks about the
Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti Semites,
you know, the secret puppet masters of the world, you know,
who rob the typical, the average person of money to
gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually
(39:25):
described Hitler based on nothing as a half breed Jew,
and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself.
So he's Hitler was an emissary of God as a
hunter to persecute Jews in Europe in the nineteen thirties
and nineteen forties, specifically for the purpose of forcing them
(39:49):
to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And you know,
he said that this was all part of the Divine plan.
Nazism was part of the Divine plan.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, but I don't just take our word for it.
You can listen to him say something along these lines
right now.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
How did it happen because God allowed it to happen.
Why did it happen because God said, my top priority
for the Jewish people is to get them to come
back to the land of Israel. Today Israel is back
in the land, and they are at His equal thirty
seven and eight. They're physically alive, but they're not spiritually alive. Now,
how is God going to cause the Jewish people to
(40:27):
come spiritually alive and say the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, he is God.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So yeah, you know, Hagy has predicted that the Antichrist
will be a half breed gay Jew and will rule
the planet on behalf of Satan. Those are the kinds
of things that he believes and he spreads. And in
spite of statements like these, several Israeli governments have welcome
to the support of right wing and times pastors like Hay.
(40:55):
I mean, they don't have any issue with, you know,
working with someone like Haig. You know, obviously that relationship
is cynical because you know, people like Hagy are able
to help bring material resources to Israel and further solidify
the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
And there's a real interesting synthusis between the far right
in Texas and the very right wing government that rules Israel.
Now Israel depends on Texas oil. Many of the weapons
Israel is using in its warren Gonza are manufactured in Texas,
(41:37):
including in the Dallas Fort Worth area where Steve and
I are having this conversation. You have some of the
wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper conservatives, such as
the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Addison, who have
spent quite a bit of money flying Texas politicians like
(42:01):
Governor Greg Abbott, the Agricultural Commissioner, said Miller, members of
the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties
and to ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that
Texas oil flows to that state.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
In the background of all of this is the money,
the money backing these politicians, and the largest and most
powerful political donor in Texas is someone who we have
mentioned already, billionaire oil man Tim Dunn. So Tim Dunn,
who is he? What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's
(42:40):
based in Midland, which is in West Texas, and over
the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of
dollars into the campaign coffers of far right politicians and
political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one
group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a
(43:00):
self admitted Hitler fan Nick went Is. Nevertheless, Dunn is
named alongside Hagey on the annual list of Israel's Top
fifty Christian Allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation, of
which Done incidentally is the chairman of the It's like
the Christian Advisory Board. So yeah, this really really powerful
(43:27):
donor who has his thumb on the scales all across
the state. He too, is an End Times prophecy believer,
and he's not just a believer. He preaches it at
his own church in Midland where he's a pastor.
Speaker 6 (43:41):
God is a consuming fire taking vengeance on those who
do not know God and on those who do not
obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word
obey means listen to. So we're talking here about unbelievers.
These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
(44:01):
of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And you know it's completely changed the nature of the
Republican Party his influence. They were already conservative and already
religious to begin with, but the sort of wave of
politicians that have been supported by Dunn has taken that
to a new level.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
And you know, I mean it's resulted in, I think,
a real assault on free speech in the state of Texas.
We have religious groups like Christians United for Israel in
the Texas Eagle Forum lobbing the state legislature and persuading
(44:42):
politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick were sympathetic to
their agenda to pass laws that limit the way people
who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So, for instance, twenty seventeen,
Texas passed has Spilled eighty nine a law that banned
to stay from doing any business with any company or
(45:03):
individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that
many activists have participated in. And on March twenty seventh
of this year, when you began to have a wave
of protests across the nation and in Texas, and there
were major protests at the UT Austin campus at the
(45:25):
University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb
called Richardson another one at the University of North Texas
UT Arlington University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded
to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined
a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood from
(45:49):
the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free, as antisemitic,
and it required public colleges and universities to review their
free speech policies and to punish what the state regards
as anti Semitic speech by faculty and students. And it
targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity
(46:14):
Committee and Students for Justice and Palestine, to be disciplined
for violating these policies the State of Texas saying these
words are forbidden.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Indeed, and despite the fact that the University of Texas
at Austin had issued a video celebrating their so called
free speech Week, I think it was just a matter
of months before they arrested one hundred and thirty six
pro Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin.
All across the state, we've seen pro Palestinian protests or
(46:49):
what you could call anti genocide protests or calls for
divestment at these various universities, and arrests have happened at
least three different universities.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
I mentioned earlier a paradox in dispensationalism, and that is
that some of the people who have absolute devotion to
promoting the state of Israel are at the same time
anti Semitic. And another paradox is that Schofield himself, Cyrus
(47:19):
Schofield himself said that Jesus wasn't into politics. He said
that when Jesus was alive, slavery, inequality of wealth, all
of these political pressure were all at their worse, and
Jesus and his apostles didn't address any of that. They
focus on salvation. That Christianity is not about changing this world,
(47:43):
because this world is doomed and the only person who's
going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these
dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be
involved in politics that's not involved in social or form.
I want you to you know, Schofield was living at
a time of progressive movement when they were trying to
(48:05):
end child labor, trying to make workplaces safer, and so on.
Today we're dealing with issues of wealth, inequality and so on.
The dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those
problems as satanic, But nevertheless, you should be involved in
politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies,
(48:26):
if it evolves banning people from gender affirming care and
so on, but that politics is okay and so and
we see this with this activism and trying to suppress
a particular side of the Israel Palestine debate.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Right, And I think that if that strain of dispensationalism
that's Schofield represented, that sort of a political dispensationalism, if
it still exists, it is certainly no longer dominant because today,
you know, we're seeing this end times theology, this belief
in this theory around the end times. It's increasingly overlapping
(49:06):
with other sort of distinct trends in Christianity. So on
the one hand, there's things like the prosperity Gospel, which is,
you know, best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest
pastor in all of the United States, and his whole
thing is, yeah, if you know, you give, you get,
and so you give me your money, and you prove
(49:28):
that you're you know, holy person, you will be rewarded.
In turn, you will be healed, all of your things
will be solved. And then the other thing that it's
overlapping with this End Times theology belief is what you know,
we might just call the Seven Mountains dominionist trend or
dominionism broadly speaking, which you may or may not be
(49:51):
familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this
idea that Christians should be at the top of all
of the mountains of society and these are just you know,
basically stand ins for the segments of society they think
are important, so education, media, politics, what have you. This
(50:15):
is a really growing idea as a sort of meme
in right wing Christianity in these sort of non denominational churches,
which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches
I think we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
And those dominionists are the ones who are taking over
these school boards that are adopting the anti trans policies
and also banning the books.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That's right, and it is a very active form of Christianity,
very politically active, and so through people like Hagey and
you know, people like Tim Dunn. We see that embodied
in what they do, the sort of advocacy that John
Hagey takes part in. In the millions and millions of
dollars that Tim Dunn umps into the state of Texas.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
You could almost characterize the Republican Party in Texas, which
is one of the most important state wings of the
Republican Party in the United States, as a wholly owned
done subsidiary.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
He really many of the most infamous Texas politicians in
this era, such as Ken Paxton, are generously supported by Dunn.
And so I think that if we kind of wrap
this up, I think that we could say that the
disdain from activism that dispensationalists claim is a ruse that
(51:40):
activism is bad if it advances any attempt to create
equal opportunity, reduce income inequality, and dispensationalists vote and they,
you know, with Texas as one of the major bases
for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential budding block. Thirty
(52:03):
nine percent of Americans have told polsters that they believe
we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is,
if you think the world's going to end, you're not
going to invest much time in making the world better,
making it a more just place. You're not going to
try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of
(52:25):
Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that supporting Israel
is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy, and that group
constitutes a third of all adult Texans, and they want
to love Israel to death because they believe that if
they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take
(52:48):
the most aggressive standards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath
of the Antichrist, which will lead to armageddon. And they're
willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for
the Second Coming to happen down to the last Jewish person.
And this is creating instability for the world and putting
(53:10):
the United States in a very difficult place in the
world stage, and the chain of events leading to our
position currently visa the Middle East can be drawn back
to this state.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
That's right. And I think one thing that I really
want to emphasize that we haven't dived into as much
as we could have, is that this sort of belief
system tends towards dehumanization. So if you believe that your
opponents are in league with the devil, or are satanic,
(53:44):
or are doing the bidding of evil, and that you
are on the side of good unequivocally and you are
doing the Lord's work. It is easy to treat your
opponents as in human, less than human, to see them
as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
And if you're wondering if it could happen here, it
meaning fascism in many ways. It's happened in Texas already,
and we have a large population here. As they wait
for the end, they're building walls around the lives of
more than thirty million people who live in the state.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I'm Stephen Manicelli.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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